Went to the Ken-o-sha park with Jennifer and Jennifer's cousin Daniels wife Sherry and Sherry's daughter Natalie, Sunday. Picture above is one of Jennifer's stealth ninja shots as you can see none of us are even noticing that the picture is being taken.

Picture above is me, Natalie and Sherry who is due with her second in October.

Beautiful weather and really nice path that starts in the back of an elementary school with some seriously elaborate playground gear. Nice conversation and an all round nice afternoon.

Currently all of twitter searchs' trending topics relate to Kanye West on the VMA's.

Geeks. Twitter is not for you anymore. It's mainstream. It's been mainstream for awhile. Not only that but it's going to take the entire country's attention span down a little more.

It was said once upon a generation ago, that MTV, shortened people's attention spans. There was even a couple years where people began to talk about Youtube shrinking attention spans further. Twitter is going to have them beat I think. Or perhaps the feed or wave that twitter will become apart of?

Speaking of shrinking. My tweet count (giving and receiving) has been shrinking as well. A couple years ago I followed 50 people and I couldn't keep up with them, I had to cut back. Now I follow 86 people, and I don't find keeping up with them a problem at all. Twitter stays useful, but frequency and novelty wears off and tweet counts take a hit.

Wish I could say the same about my Google Reader List. That continues to grow and grow and no matter how much I subdivide it, I read only a tiny fraction of it.

We are now connected with anyone in the world that can manage to find a way online. Finding a way online gets easier and easier every year, and if you are living in the US, the price of getting online is now as low as an internet enabled cell phone, or a $199 notebook with access to free wi-fi. Pretty much everyone who wants to be connected to the internet, that you are likely to want to connect with, is connected to the internet.

Billions of people available to you then. Millions? Hundreds of Thousands? of Companies, now just a keyboard click away, yet attention is still finite. There are still only the same 24 hours a day. Technology can now fill your every waking minute with more information than ever dreamed of, yet evolution hasn't changed you, you can still only have contact of any meaningful length with a handful of people a day. But we want more, signal from the noise, the cream off the top.

So people are making software that is going to edit all this for you. Facebook already does this. If you follow alot of people, they don't show you everything, they know you can't keep up, so they weight people you talk to more, give them higher priority, they take into account people you've "liked", if you click on pictures they show you more pictures. Software is being written, not to connect you to a shared experience, but to continually create a highly specialized individual one just for you.

"Did you see the latest [blank]?" No, soon you probably won't be able to answer that question, for anything beyond the biggest, lowest common denominator's of topics or at least you won't be able to answer that question of anyone except someone whose profile is very close to yours. The software providing you your individual experience won't have shown that to you. You click on cats, it was a dog story, it will never even show up in your scroll.

You can forward the link to your friends though, publish it to your feed. But most of them won't click on it, won't read it, at best they'll make a mental note to check it out later in case you bring it up again later. It's not that they don't think it will be interesting, it's not that they don't value your forwards, but the computer is giving them a more personal feed than you. The computer knows what they like and is better at holding their attention than you are (or it will be very soon at least.). Don't worry though, the computer knows your friends too. And when several of your friends click on the same thing and give that thing their attention, the likelyhood will rise that the computer will highlight that very same link to you. Deny those links from your friends enough times though and the computer will slowly stop showing you them. The computer will be the first to know if your friendships start slipping away. Maybe at a certain point it will even ask you "Do you want to remove John Doe from your friends list?"

You might even say yes, because you are so connected. You'll still have the dozen or so friends and family and a dunbar's number worth of connections and acquaintances that evolution has equipped you to deal with, plus a 1,000 or two more people's names who you somewhat recognize. Foremost among all these will be your computer's feed, because it knows what you like. It knows what you've been talking about lately and knows what you are likely to be interested in, and you'll pay attention to it, but it will be so personal that you won't share it with anyone else. You won't share all of it anyway, maybe glimpses of it, but no, not all of it. Not the part based on your private journals, or the part based on your medical records, or the fact that for whatever reason you click on some hollywood starlet's photos just a little more than you'd care to admit too. You won't share the complete GPS mapping of your exact movements for the last 5 years, even though the part of your feed that connects to your phone knows that.

You'll read the most interesting things. Watch the most interesting videos. Listen to the most interesting music. And yes, get the most relevant ads. And a computer feed will have your attention. Will be in your top 5 if not top 3, if not top 1.

I'm in advertising. It's my job to get people's attention, at my best I help find the right people and advertise to those who can use and benefit from the information I'm charged with delivering. But once you start hanging out with the feed, once the feed is your best friend. Once you are a demographic of one and your time and attention is completely gatekeepered for you by this feed, well then, my job is going to be alot lot more difficult isn't it?

P.S. I read thru the above once, I added a few more comments along the way. I didn't read it again though, frankly I'm surprised you did, and in anycase, My Google Reader and Twitter are calling me, I don't have time to read this a third time ;)

Sat, 25 May 2013 07:57:39 -0700
I?m not a fan of the new Flickr redesign. It?s not even that I don?t like the visual look of it.My primary beef is: without warning they completely changed the service for paying customers. I?ve payed for a Pro account for years under the assumption that paying for a service would provide a little more reliability. Flickr has shown that not to be the case, so I?m planning to use it far less frequently and probably far differently than the personal photo site of record I have been using it as. (I?m also not pleased with their likely upcoming attention/advertising model)

I was able to put all my photos into one Set and download the full size images using a free service called flickandshare.com, so I have everything safely out of the service now. Likely I will eventually set up my own simple photo gallery (and give these photos a new home) on my website at chris-karath.com. Hosting your own services and codes seem to be the most reliable method for content that you want around for years to come.

Photos that are here now, will probably continue to be here, Yahoo willing, into the future.

Since Flickr has shown itself to be of unpredictable stability, and it appears to be transforming into more a social network than a photo service, I?ll probably plan on treating it as such. If you subscribe to my account for the action figures, I?ll probably from time to time still post a picture or two of those here with links back to my own site where I?ll likely start posting more photos.

If you follow for my personal photos, following me on Twitter or my personal blog atchris-karath.com will probably be your best bet. --- Best wishes, Chris.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:02 -0700
I've never actually taken the full tour of the Museum. It was free today, so we went through it. It's nicely done for it's sort of thing.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:02 -0700
Those light poles to the shore should be dry land

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:01 -0700
Stairways to nowhere. Grand Rapids.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:00 -0700

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:48:59 -0700

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:48:58 -0700
Grand Rapids Art Museum. This display is by a new guy who just joined our team at work.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 06:49:01 -0700

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 12:17:53 -0700
Both these guys have contributed a lot to comics. I'm not implying anything with the choice of pose. I figure in classic comic parlance though, these two comic heroes would be obligated to fight before teaming up to defeat some great evil.

Recent Blog Comments

Thread: p1825 Post by Jolloway2013-02-23 12:23:49 Hi Cris and other people who view this sight,
I just started a blog site jolloway.co.uk and I wonderd if anyone can give me any tips on blogging. I am curently using a site called word press to host me blog. I start around about a month ago and I\'m really struggling with it and if you do reply I\'m only 11 and found this sight by a photo in google Images.
-Josh
P.S. I love the background XP

Thread: p1706 Post by Chris2012-10-27 13:29:47 Fortunately, I resisted the DC/Master Bundles as they were pretty much only bundled with basic figures I already had. Had they been bundled with more unique DC figures, I might have alot more Masters figures at this point ;)

Thread: p1706 Post by De2012-10-27 13:06:27 I almost bit on Masters of the Universe when they were being bundled with DC Universe figures in the two-packs. I\'ve also liked the blending of sci-fi and fantasy but a lad only has so much room :-)

Thread: p1674 Post by T. Bass2012-10-24 20:55:50 Hi Chris:
Like you, I bought and just received an ONDA V701. Mine took 32 days (!) to arrive from China (bought from gadgetdealer.com... avoid like plague), and the box was beat to hell, but it seems to work fine ....with one exception.
That said, I like the tablet thus far, but a couple of things aren\'t flying right. One, it was advertised as having Adobe Flash ver. 11.1, but instead, mine came with 10.2. Yours? Not sure this matters, as Flash is going the way of the dodo-bird as far as Android goes.
My only real complaint thus far, and that despite trying everything I could find online, I cannot get NetFlix to work. This was/is one of the main reasons I bought it, as they advertised that it \"works with NetFlix\". I don\'t know whether it\'s the tablet, or the app that is the problem, but nonetheless, no love from NetFlix at this point.
I don\'t know if you are subscribed to Netflix, but if you are, I sure would like to know if it works for you on your V701, and if so, how did you get it going, and what settings are you\'re using to make it work? Appreciate hearing from you.
Best,
T. Bass
Applegate, Oregon

Thread: p1557 Post by davy2012-08-24 17:58:58 i kind of agree with you, and i\'m sure bale had the best intentions but the whole media circus at times is disturbing.
but if to had to pick on whether bale should have visited or not i\'d rather he visit for the sole reason that if he made any of the survivors feel good,even if it was only for the briefest moments, then it was worth it.
the victims medical and emotonals needs should be put first and if bale\'s visit helped any of them emotionally then i\'m glad